Red Grass River (47 page)

Hanford Mobley shook his head and cursed under his breath and followed his uncle into the tempestuous night.

And Annie Baker hurried to the door and shut it hard against the buffeting storm.

A year earlier, following Clarence Middleton’s and Ray Lynn’s getaway from a road gang the day after John Ashley escaped from Raiford, Sheriff Bob Baker had requested and received from the state penitentiary the prison records of all three men and of all convicts who’d been known to associate with them. Each convict’s folder included a photograph. After studying the material, Bob Baker had put it all in his Ashley Gang file. He had since made it policy for his officers to check any strangers arrested in Palm Beach County against the photos and descriptions in the Raiford records. And so, when Deputy Grover Pass received a telephone call from the station in Stuart information him that the local hospital had reported a battered patient armed with a pistol when he was admitted, he took the Ashley Gang file and drove up to Stuart in a furious thunderstorm and went to the hospital ward to have a look at this patient who said his name was Walter Jones.

Deputy Pass had a good eye for features, and despite the man’s battered aspect, he recognized him as the same man in one of the prison photographs in the file. The file report said the man’s name was Ben Tracey and that he had been in the same cell block and work gang as John Ashley and Ray Lynn. He had served out his sentence only a short time before their escapes.

The battered man had watched Deputy Pass carefully as he looked back and forth from his face to each photograph in turn. When he looked twice at the same photo and then grinned, the man had said, “Shut,” through his mutilated mouth and broken nose. Deputy Pass cuffed Ben Tracey’s wrist to the bed and went to the desk to call Sheriff Baker. Several of the other ward patients had been looking on and fell to murmured speculation among themselves. In a neighboring bed a man with two broken legs grinned at Ben Tracey and said, “Sometimes it aint no end of trouble, is it?” Ben Tracey glared at him and said, “Uck you.”

It was dawn when the sheriff arrived at the hospital. After visiting with the commissioner whose daughter had been injured in the car crash and then stopping by the newspaper office in West Palm Beach to have a talk with the night editor, he had called the station to check in and the desk clerk had relayed Grover Pass’s message to call him at the Stuart hospital. When Grover told him he had arrested a patient who might be in the Ashley Gang, Bob Baker ordered the suspect moved to a private room and a pair of deputies placed on guard at his door. He then had Elmer Padgett drive him directly to Stuart. The
wind had fallen off and the thunder and lightning had ceased their action, but the rain yet fell.

The interrogation did not take long. When Bob Baker asked Ben Tracey where John Ashley might be found, Ben said, “Uck you wid a arden hose.” Bob Baker said he had him for bank robbery but would drop all charges against him in exchange for information on John Ashley and his gang. “Aint no rat,” Ben Tracey said. Bob Baker stood over him and gently laid a hand on his bandaged chest and repeated his question. Tracey cursed him once more and Bob Baker leaned hard on his chest.

Tracey’s quavering scream brought nurses on the run but the two cops outside the closed door would not permit them to enter the room. One of the nurses ran off to find a doctor but she was ten minutes in returning with one in tow and by then Ben Tracey had come to see the wisdom in accepting Bob Baker’s deal and had hastily confided all he knew about John Ashley’s immediate intentions. The sheriff was already on his way out of the hospital when the doctor arrived.

Bob Baker told Elmer Padgett to round up his brought Joel and deputies L. B. Thomas and Henry Stubbs and get up to Fort Pierce as quick as they could and call on St. Lucie County Sheriff J. R. Merritt. “I’m puttin you boys in his charge. Tell him exactly what this Tracey shitbird told us,” Bob Baker said. “If he aint lyin and the Ashley bunch stopped to see their bubba in Vero tonight, J.R. can maybe catch up to them there, or maybe further along the road. They got no reason to think we know their plan, so they got no call to be in a hurry. I’m gonna go check on Annie and the back at the house. Keep me posted.”

He took the car they’d come in and Elmer took the guard deputies’ car and followed him out to the Dixie Highway. There Bob Baker turned south for West Palm Beach and Elmer wheeled north to the county sheriff’s station in Stuart where he would telephone his brother and the other two and tell them to get up to Stuart right now and he would explain things to them on the way to Fort Pierce.

Bob Baker did not telephone his wife before heading home. It had occurred to him that on finding he was not at home John Ashley might have decided to wait at the house in ambush for him. If so, he did not want to tip him off that he was coming.

The morning was darkly gray with lingering storm clouds. He turned onto the muddy road to his house and slowed to hardly more than walking speed. He studied the wooden sides of the road carefully in search of a waiting car but did not see one. He stopped at the bend
in the road and regarded the house, some forty yards distant. There was a light in the parlor window but nothing looked out of the ordinary. He jacked a round in the chamber of his pump action and got out and headed for the porch. Before he got halfway there the door swung open and he raised the shotgun and had his finger on the trigger before he saw it was Annie silhouetted in the light from inside.

He looked in on the sleeping girls from their door and then softly shut it again. he made Annie sit on the couch in the parlor and tell him everything, and she did—all of it, including John Ashley’s remark about going to Key West to catch a boat to Mexico. She told him everything except about the smile John Ashley had given her. A smile that had given her ease, though she could not have explained why.

Bob Baker looked off to the hallway leading to his daughters’ room and looked at the muddy tracks across the carpet from one hallway to the other. She felt the heat of his raging eyes and said, “They didnt scare the girls, Robert. The girls were scared of the storm more than anything.”

“They brought
gasoline
in the house?” Bob Baker said. “And they didnt use it?”

“The little one, Hannie, he wanted to, but John wouldnt let him.”

“
John?
” His look was as accusatory as his tone. “
Hannie?
”

“Those are their names, arent they?” She reached out to put her hand on his arm but he abruptly stood up and began packing. She watched him for a moment and then said softly, “I had the feeling he didnt really want to be here. Whatever it was he had against you…well, I dont think it matters to him anymore. I had the feeling he was going away. He wont come back here again, Robert, I know he wont.”

Bob Baker turned to glare at her. “Since when did you get to know so awful much about him?”

She looked at him a moment, her aspect unfathomable to him, and then got up and walked down the hall and into the bedroom and gently closed the door.

He went to the kitchen and poured a tall glass of cold tea and sugar and then added rum from the sideboard jug. Then he returned to the parlor and turned off the lamp and sat in the gray gloom of the morning and of his own thoughts and drank slowly.

Sneak up and shoot you dead while you were sleeping is what he meant to do. When he saw you werent here he run off because he’s too cowardly to try to shoot you any way but in your sleep.

That wasnt true and he knew it. The man was a sonofabitch but he wasnt a coward nor a backshooter.

Why’d he leave? Why not lay an ambush for when he got home? How come he didnt burn the house? He’d come ready to.

He drank and thought. Annie was right, the man was leaving. Not to Key West and Mexico. That was a bullshit story meant to distract him from looking for them along the upper coast until they were long gone. Jesus. How damn stupid did they think he was?

Well, he thought, he would either get away from J.R. and the boys or he wouldnt. In either case it would finally be done with.

He fell asleep in the chair and when next he woke it was the middle of the afternoon. His neck was sore. He could hear Annie and the girls laughing faintly in the kitchen. The parlor window was softly bright with sunlight. He got up and went to the kitchen and the girls rushed to him for a hug and Annie smiled and said she hadnt had the heart to wake him from the chair, he’d been so deeply asleep. He asked if anyone had telephoned and no one had. He assumed Sheriff Merritt and the deputies had not found Ashley and his gang in Vero or anywhere else. The man was gone, he was sure of it. He couldnt help smiling, and Annie herself seemed to brighten in the light of the good cheer.

He sat and sipped coffee and chatted with his daughters while Annie fried a steak and potatoes for him and sliced bread to toast in the pan with the steak juice. He cleaned his plate and then had a large serving of peach pie for dessert. Then his daughters took turns showing off for him by reading aloud long passages from their schoolbooks. He had not enjoyed himself this way in longer than he could recall.

Evening came on. While Annie fixed a fresh pot of coffee he called the station to see if his deputies had returned from St. Lucie County yet or files at report. The desk officer said he had been just about to call him. Elmer Padgett had telephoned not give minutes ago with a message.

“He said tell you they’re at the Sebastian River Bridge,” the desk officer said. “Said to tell you, ‘We’re on em,’ in exactly them words. I asked what that meant and he said you’d know. What the hell’s Elmer and them doing way up in St. Lucie, Sheriff?”

Bob Baker hung up and stared at the parlor window gone dark with nightfall.

It wasnt done with.

“We’re on them” wasnt the same as “We got them.” What if he was to get away? Maybe Tracey was bullshitting about Johnny wanting
to go to Texas for good. Maybe Tracey was trying to put him off his guard. Maybe Johnny had been bullshitting Tracey.

Even if he did go away, who was to say he wouldnt be back? He’d gone twice now and come back both times. Tracey said he’d come back this time just to kill him. He had no trouble believing that.

Bob Baker could not have explained what he felt at the moment but its similarity to fear was enraging.

“Here you are, sir,” Annie said brightly at his side, holding out to him a steaming mug of coffee. He turned to her and she saw his face and her smile vanished.

He mumbled something about paperwork and turned away without taking the coffee and went to the den. He lit the lamp in his room and saw the rifle bullet set upright on the desk.

His chest went so tight he could hardly breathe. A sudden red pressure swelled behind his eyes.

Son of a bitch
.

He heard John Ashley’s laughter as plainly as when he’d run off in the rain after busting his head against the jailhouse wall, as plainly as when he took his leg and gun.

He could see him grinning as big as when he came out of the pineywoods behind Julie.

Julie
. He could in this moment smell her hair and remember the feel of her breath on his face. Could see her eyes and how they shone for him. And then shone for him no more after she’d been to the woods with John Ashley.

He picked up the bullet and closed his hand so tightly around it his fist trembled.

And then howled and drove the fist into the desktop and his knuckles left their imprint in the heavy wood.

And then spun and snatched up his gunbelt and stalked out to his runabout and roared away through the night toward the highway.

November 1, 1924

B
Y THE TIME
E
LMER
P
ADGETT, SLEEPLESS AND HAGGARD, HAD
tracked down his brother and the other two deputies and they all came together in Stuart it was almost noon. It was past two o’clock when St. Lucie County Sheriff J. R Merritt and two deputies he introduced as Wiggins and Jones met with them at the Bluebird Café on Orange Avenue in fort Piece.

As Elmer Padgett explained the situation the St. Lucie cops listened intently. J. R. Merritt had a reputation as a tough sheriff. There were rumors of rumrunners who had driven their loads into St. Lucie County and never been seen again. He’d been appointed sheriff by the governor two years ago and was facing his first election to the office in just three days. He was known to have political ambitions, and the public recognition to be had from busting up the Ashley Gang could be invaluable to his future. Listening to Elmer repeat what Ban Tracey had told Bob Baker, Merritt could not restrain a smile. He told the Palm Beach officers he was deeply grateful to Sheriff Baker for the opportunity to bring to justice such a bad bunch as John Ashley’s. “The question is,” he said, “was this Tracey fella telling Sheriff Bob the truth.”

He turned to a deputy and said, “Jonesy, why dont you go see if this bad-ass really is at Lillis’s place. We’ll be waitin for you at Rhonda’s.” Deputy Jones nodded and went.

Wiggins led the way in the St. Lucie police car and Sheriff Merritt
rode with the Palm Beach deputies. He sat in the backseat with Elmer Padgett to one side of him and Henry Stubbs on the other, each one holding one side of a fluttering regional map he’d opened up. He tapped his finger on Vero where it lay about fifteen miles north of Fort Pierce. He knew Wayne Lillis and knew the marina where he lived in a piling house and docked his charter boat. he said it was not a good place to try to take a tough bunch. The house and boat were both at the far end of the marina and anybody approaching along the piers would be spotted in plenty of time to allow for a getaway. With his finger on the map he showed Padgett and Stubbs how the bandits could flee downriver to the Fort Pierce Inlet or upriver into the serpentine channels of the mangrove narrows—or go straight across to the barrier island and run north or south under cover of the high brush and then cross back to the mainland at some safer point.

“What about if
we
get us a boat?” Elmer said. “Come up on em by way of the river?”

“
You
can do that if you want,” Merritt said. “I aint about to go out there in the river and make myself a wide-open target.”

“All right then, what?” Henry Stubbs said.

Sheriff J.R. Merritt studied the map for a moment and said. “Oh, I maybe got an idea.” He looked up and grinned from one to the other of them. “But it aint worth spit if they already gone, is it? Let’s wait and see are they still around.”

Rhonda’s was a small cafe off the Dixie Highway a half-mile north of Vero. They sat at a large corner table and ordered coffee and two buckets of fried oysters. They ate without conversation until Merritt said. “You know, boys, grateful as I am to Sheriff Baker for the chance to nab this bunch myself, I cant help but wonder how come he didnt come along with you all. I always heard he had a special dislike for that whole Ashley family and for John in particular. I mean, you’d think he’d make special sure to be in one this.”

The Palm Beach deputies looked sidelong at each other as if each would have one of the other answer the question. Though they had not spoken of it among themselves they had all wondered the same thing. Then Elmer Padgett said, “He had to go see about his family. Tracey said Ashley was goin out to his house. He had to go see if they all right. It’s only natural.”

“Well you right about that,” Merritt said. He scratched his ear contemplatively. “I guess if he sees his wife and kids are all right, he’ll be along, wont he? I mean, he aint about to miss out on takin down about the worst bandit we ever had in this part of the state, is he?
Especially one that sends him a bullet and says he’s got another one with his name on it.”

The Palm Beach deputies looked at him.

“Oh yeah, I heard that story,” Merritt said. He blew on his coffee and took a sip. “You know, it’s somethin else I’ve long heard. I aint never believed it for a minute, you understand, but still, I always heard Bobby Baker’s always been just a little, well…scared of John Ashley. They say it’s been that way since they was pups. Now boys, just between us, why you figure anybody’d say such a thing about Sheriff Bob?”

“Well, sheriff, all I can tell you for certain sure is Bob Baker aint afraid of any man alive,” Henry Stubbs said. “I can tell you that sure as I’m sittin here.” The other Palm Beach deputies nodded.

“Some people seem to just naturally prefer a lie to the truth of a thing,” Elmer Padgett said. “Who can say why? Lie’s just more excitin for em, I guess.”

Merritt chuckled in the manner of one responding politely to a awkwardly told joke. “I guess,” he said.

And then Deputy Jones was coming through the front door and spied them and came over and took a chair at the table. He looked at their expectant faces each in turn and without expression said, “They aint at Lillis’s.”

The Palm Beach cops muttered curses and sagged in their chairs. Jones grinned to see their disappointment and then said, “They aint at Lillis’s but they still in town. They’re at Mel’s shootin pool.”

The Palm Beach deputies sat up and exchanged excited looks.

“You boys described them pretty good,” Jones said. “But I tell you what—they dont look the least bit worried somebody might be on their tail.”

Elmer looked at Merritt. “Can we take them there?”

Merritt shook his head. “Not unless I wanna risk shootin bystanders—and I dont.” He pulled out his map and spread it open on the table. “Here,” he said, pointing. “If they’re going north they have to cross here.”

The others leaned forward to see his finger at the mouth of the Sebastian River—where they all knew there was a bridge.

“Let’s get out there before they do,” Merritt said as he stood up.

Except for Hanford Mobley who was still a little sulky because John Ashley had prevented him from burning down Bob Baker’s
house, they were in high spirits. John Ashley felt like a fresh new life was opening up to him.

They had gone out on Wayne’s boat early that morning and taken several dolphin just outside the Fort Pierce Inlet and then reeled in some trout on light tackle as they chugged back up the lagoon to the marina under a bright noon sun. They fileted the fish and took them to Lucy’s Kitchen up the street and lingered over a leisurely meal of fried filets and scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, grits and gravy, biscuits and coffee. They had then taken haircuts at Shorty O’Malley’s shop across the street and passed some time chatting with a few of the oldtimers in the local Liars Club who came together there every day to argue politics and tell stories of the old days and shake their heads over the abject state of the modern world. One of them made bold to ask John Ashley how he had managed to break out of state prison twice in one lifetime and John Ashley told him and they all listened raptly to his story. In days to come most of them would at first retell the tale almost exactly the way he told it, but after a time each man of them would begin to embroider it in his own fashion.

The gang had then repaired to Mel’s for a few games of pool and bottles of beer. The first games sparked such a fierce competition for the title of King of the Table that they set up an elaborate six-man playoff system. BY the time Marie Lillis banked the cue ball off the side rail to sink the eight in an opposite corner pocket and beat Ray Lynn for the championship, the windows of the hall had been dark for hours and they were all a little buzzed on beer. Marie beamed with delight as the men happily chided each other for having lost to a woman.

They took their leave of Wayne and Marie on the street in front of Mel’s and got into the Ford. Hanford Mobley, his spirits improved, tooted the klaxon and they drove off up the highway.

Twelve miles north of Vero was the hamlet of Sebastian and three miles farther on was the Saint Sebastian River and the flat wooden bridge that traversed it. The region was isolated and smelled of tidal marshes and rarely sounded of other than wind hissing in the cattails and seabirds squalling at their feed. The sound end of the bridge rested on the tip of a long and narrow spit of land where the highway was flanked to either side by high shrubs and clusters of pines.

The sun was still well about the horizon when the two police cars arrived at the bridge and cross over it and turned around and parked on either side of the road to face any traffic coming off the bridge from
the south. For the rest of the afternoon they waited with guns out of sight but at the ready. A few cars came over the bridge but none conveyed the Ashley Gang. After a time Sheriff Merritt wondered aloud if John Ashley was simply taking his time about getting underway for Jacksonville or if he had decided to turn back south for some reason.

At sundown the sheriff told Elmer to move the Palm Beach car onto the bridge and he then positioned his own car across the foot of the bridge to block all passage at this end of it. He removed a heavy length of chain and two large flashlights from his car and handed them to Henry Stubbs and L. B. Thomas in the other vehicle and told Deputy Jones to stay with the St. Lucie car and tell any motorists who approached from the north that they would have to wait until morning to cross or they could press on by some inland route. He then got in the Palm Beach car with the others and they returned to the south end of the bridge and all got out except Elmer Padgett who was driving. They removed the chain and flashlights from the car and Merritt told Elmer to drive back to Vero and borrow a red lantern from the train depot. “Another few minutes it’ll be dark enough so nobody’ll see it’s a cop car unless their lights shine on you,” the sheriff said. “Could be our boy’s gone back, but keep an eye open for him anyhow.”

Forty minutes later Elmer had the lantern and he followed the depot agent’s directions to Mel’s and as he went chugging by on the darkened street he saw them still in there shooting pool and drinking beer and laughing. He wheeled around and headed back for the river and then thought Sheriff Bob must be wondering what they were up to and so stopped at Rhonda’s Cafe and asked the use of the telephone to call his headquarters in Palm Beach County. When the desk clerk said the sheriff was at home, Elmer gave him a message to relay to him, couching it in sufficiently cryptic terms to keep the cafe eavesdroppers from knowing what was going on. Then he went back to rejoin the others at the bridge.

As they drove past the few scattered buildings that composed Sebastian, Clarence Middleton was telling about a duck who went into a speakeasy and asked the bartender if he had any fudge. “Barkeep says, ‘
No
, I aint got no fudge. Cant you see this is a barroom? Get the hell outa here!’ Duck leaves, comes back the next day. ‘Got any fudge?’ Barkeep says, ‘I tole you yesterday I aint got no fudge. Now get the hell outa here!’ Duck leaves, comes back the next day. ‘Got any fudge?’ Barkeep said, ‘You little feathery son of a bitch! You come in here one more time and ask me that I’m gonna nail your goddamn beak
to the bar.’ Duck leaves, comes back next day, says to the bartender, ‘Got any nails?’ Barkeep says, ‘
What?
No, I aint got no nails!’ Duck says, ‘Got any fudge?’”

A Dodge sedan turned onto the highway directly in front of them from an intersecting dirt road and Hanford Mobley applied the brakes hard and the Ford stalled. Beside him John Ashley bumped his head hard on the windshield and behind him Clarence Middleton and Ray Lynn were thrown against the front seats.

“Bastard!” Hanford Mobley shouted and the only two people on the street looked at him. The Dodge sped away without even slowing. “Let’s catch him and whip his ass!” The Dodge went out of sight around a bend in the road ahead.

Clarence rummaged under the seats till he found the crank and then got out with it. He had to twirl the balky motor three times before it fired up.

“Hurry up, dammit!” Hanford said as Clarence held his hand to a headlamp light and examined a callus he’d ripped open with the crank.

Clarence got in and Hanford Mobley gunned the Model T ahead, smoothly and swiftly working leaves and pedals. The motor rapped sweetly and the car swayed as it picked up speed.

John Ashley laughed. “Whooo! Lookit this boy go! I hope you catch em, Hannie, but I hope they’re little fellas, cause you’re the one’s gonna brace em, you being the one who’s so hot to whip their ass and all.”

Hanford gave him a look. “I aint scared of em and I dont need you all’s help. I’ll brace their asses, you watch.”

“I got a dollar says old Hannie dont catch em before we hit the bridge,” Clarence Middleton said.

There were no takers and Hanford muttered, “You bastards,
I’ll
take the bet,” and the others laughed.

The road wound through the darkness and a heavy stand of pine and they had gone more than two miles before they caught sight of the single red taillight of the car ahead.

“There the sumbitches are!” Hanford said, and leaned forward on the steering wheel as if to lend more speed to the Ford.

“Damn if they aint movie right smartly their ownselfs,” Ray Lynn said. “They probably know Hardtime Hannie here’s after their ass.”

And now they saw a red light shining up ahead on the spit of land where the bridge began. The Dodge slowed as it went out onto the spit and its lights closed in to illuminate a red lantern fixed to a chain
hang across the foot of the bridge. The car rolled up to within a few feet of the lantern and stopped.

Hanford Mobley was laughing as they reached the spit and he slowed the Ford. “You mulletheads sure missed the chance of a easy dollar,” he said. “Pay up, Ray!” He brought the car to a halt a few feet behind the Dodge. A pale of faces looked back at them though the car’s rear window.

“Whoever the hell closed off the bridge,” Ray Lynn said as he handed a dollar over the front seat to Hanford Mobley, “you oughta give em half this for the help.”